Bring out the glitz: Marianne Rosenberg sings hits from the golden age of disco, from Gloria Gaynor to Grace Jones. Her new album is called «Diva». She can say a lot about that. Is she one herself?
For decades, Marianne Rosenberg’s name has immediately triggered a catchy tune in many people: “He belongs to me”. Such a hit can be a blessing or a curse. The singer has developed a certain serenity. “It will accompany you until they lower the box,” she says.
In a jazz song she described exactly that. «This song belongs to me like my name on the door. If the Rolling Stones can’t afford to go on stage without ‘Angie’ or ‘Satisfaction’ – who am I to think I can go home without ‘He belongs to me’?”
Anyone who has ever danced to hits or has seen the ZDF hit parade, which has long been discontinued, knows her: Marianne Rosenberg (67) has shaped the German music world since the 1970s, and whole generations of couples have probably met through her hits.
Intellectuals hid their records behind Pink Floyd, she says herself. She is an icon in the gay scene. She started young. As a teenager, she was discovered at a young talent competition. “Mr. Paul McCartney”, “Marleen”, “Fremder Mann” or “I’m like you” are milestones in her career, during which she experimented a lot with rock, pop, chanson, jazz, techno and punk. Her 50th stage anniversary album made it to #1 in 2020.
Bowing to the disco queens
And now it’s back to the dance floor, back under the disco ball. On the cover of her new album “Diva” she wears a pink glitter robe. Rosenberg recorded songs from the heyday of disco queens in the legendary Hansa Studios in Berlin.
They are cover versions with lyrics she translated into German, today’s pounding dance sounds with the typical disco strings. “You can’t go like that,” for example, is in the original “Don’t Leave Me This Way” by Thelma Houston (not by Jimmy Somerville, Rosenberg attaches importance to that). It’s glitter turned to music, for parties or for the street to the Christopher Street Day parade. Rosenberg’s son Max (30) helped repackage the old hits in a contemporary way.
She is waiting for the interview in Berlin’s summer heat at Café Einstein. When musicians talk about their album, it can be boring. They often say what they want to express with the music. This is not the case with Rosenberg. She has a lot to say about her life, her music and what women struggle with.
Her family history, which has been little known for a long time – her father survived the Nazi death camp in Auschwitz as a member of the Sinti minority – is not the subject of this opportunity. She is careful with this heritage and does not want to deal with it briefly or even use it for PR purposes.
trip to the past
Like so many artists, Rosenberg has the long silence of the Corona period behind him. During the pandemic, she revisited the old days and the music that accompanied her. “Then I thought how wonderful it would be to bring back this music, these voices and these iconic women, from Grace Jones to Thelma Houston to Donna Summer. If you could bring back that time when people met on the dance floor, not on the internet.”
The most formative for her was Gloria Gaynor, the groove with strings, brass and soulful arrangements. Rosenberg deliberately chose the album title. She feels “Diva” as similarly derogatory for women as the term “Emanze”. She wants to do something about it.
The singer knows dazzling rumors about herself, for example: The diva has her wardrobe changed two hours before the performance. “I found that funny at first, but then you can see which way the wind is blowing.”
Your definition of «diva»
The term actually comes from opera. “The diva for me is Maria Callas, a great artist,” says Rosenberg. “If you then ask me: am I a diva? Yes, in the sense that I define diva that she has become this woman with self-determined work, with a long emancipatory path from a quiet, introverted girl. Then I’m a diva.”
Musician Rio Reiser helped her to work independently. She was shaped by the 1980s and the left-wing scene in her native Berlin. Reiser wrote the song “Forever and you” for Rosenberg, as she remembers. “He gives me this and I say to him: you know, I don’t sing songs about love and men anymore. I’ve done enough.”
Both had the same manager, but went in different directions: “He wanted to sell a lot of records and go into the mainstream.” You searched for another language. Reiser encouraged her to write her own lyrics. That’s why she pays tribute to him on “Diva” with a song.
Rosenberg no longer goes to demos like in the 80s. “It has become too exhausting for me at my age.” But she’s still committed. “I don’t see myself as a political artist, but as a civilian woman. I also think that everything is political. In particular, the smallest connection that exists between two people is the most political of all. That’s where politics begins for me. Keyword equality in the partnership. self-determined life. Emancipation. Equal wages.”
Rosenberg experienced that she was “completely underestimated” as a woman. “Doing your own work, writing music, producing music, getting the budget – it took a long time before I was entrusted with it,” she says. “As a woman, you have to yell and fuss 20,000 times louder to even be seen and assert yourself.” Diva – that’s also a political word for her. It not only stands for other great women, but also for a long journey to oneself.